


The torn up road

by BlackWidowRising



Category: Six of Crows Duology
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Fandom Trumps Hate 2020, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24896278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackWidowRising/pseuds/BlackWidowRising
Summary: The Dregs were many things before they were the Dregs.
Relationships: Everyone & Everyone, Nina Zenik/Mathias Helvar
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13
Collections: Fandom Trumps Hate 2020





	The torn up road

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lincyclopedia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lincyclopedia/gifts).



> This is my submission for FandomTrumpsHate 2020, I hope you enjoy it Lin!

1, there is no way to make this story interesting

Nina grows up in the Little Palace. She lives a rigid military life, day in and day out, she trains. It is only after she leaves that she knows that not all children grow up this way. Nina feels guilty sometimes because while Zoya says they give Grisha freedom and a good life, Nina knows that they are just offering a gilded cage. Nina thought she knew what chains were in Ravka, she thought her gilded cage was the worst sort of prison, in Fjerda what she had was considered a palace.

In another world Nina would have killed her captors. In another story she would have captained the ship to Ravka. But this is not that world and this is not that story. This is the world where Nina saves a drowning enemy boy. This is the story where a Grisha girl and a Fjerdan boy fall in love.

Nina and Matthias make their way to Kerch, they fight and fight and fight and fall in love. In another world they would live together in Kerch. In another story they would have a good life, a happy life. But this is not that world and this is not that story. This is the world where Nina sees soldiers of the Second Army. This is the story where Nina tells a merchant that Matthias is a slaver.

Nina will never forget Matthias’ face as they drag him away. Nina sells her soul to save Matthias and sells her body for a life. Katz Brekker is not a good man, he will try to tell you this but Nina knows better. He offers a place in the White Rose, a job, a family, a chance to save Matthias. Nina takes his offer.

In another world Nina would have been too proud to work on her back, to help criminals. In another story she would have said no to joining a gang. But this is not that world and this is not that story. This is the story where Nina understands that she is worth more alive than dead. This is the world where Nina breaks her last chains to the Little Palace and the Second Army.

2, i want to tell you this story without having to confess anything

Inej will never tell her parents all the things that she has done, there is no world where there is an absolution of sins.

It starts like this, Inej is kidnapped from her bed, she is sold across Ravka until she arrives in the Kerch harbor.

No, no, stop. Not like that.

It starts with a girl whose mother swore she had wings. It starts with love, with a mother and father and aunts and uncles and cousins who all loved each other. It starts with a girl who danced and laughed and knew nothing of pain but prayed to her saints regardless. It starts with a girl who had a gift, and that is how it will end.

They tell her, that is not where your story started. They say, that is not interesting, tell us about how they took you. Tell us about how we failed you.

Fine.

This is where it starts. Inej oversleeps, she is warm and sleepy and comfortable so she does not leave the caravan. It starts like this, Inej mistakes a slavers grab of her ankle for her father, by the time she realises her mistake it is too late.

Inej is shipped across Ravka, across the ocean, to Kerch. She is inspected like cattle on the docks she is sold into indentured servitude. She is sold to a brothel. They dress her in silks, they put bells on her ankles, tattoo her with their mark. Tante Heleen tells her to be a good girl and maybe she will make it out alive. Of course that is a lie, there is no way to work off this indenture, not the way they charge her for everything she does in this place.

Inej sleeps with men, she collects information from them, she reports to Tante Heleen, all the while she plots an escape.

Kaz Brekker is not the sort of man a good, pious, Suli girl would think to approach. He is a murderer the other girls whisper, he is the spawn of the devil they say, Inej thinks that he is a man like any other, only he has built a myth around his name.

Inej makes a deal. She pays off her indenture and goes to work as Kaz Brekker’s Wraith, she makes herself useful. He does not ask her to take his gangs’ tattoo, for that Inej is greatful.

What was your job as the Wraith her parents will ask her. What did you do? Here is where Inej will lie. Here is the point that Inej will lie because what parent wants a murderer for a daughter? What parent will love the woman that she has become.

It starts like this, Inej Ghafa is born into a family of acrobats, she walks the wire without a net and dreams of flight. It starts like this Inej Ghafa is abducted from her bed and sold into slavery. It starts with a cunning, calculating boy who looks at a quiet girl and gives her an opportunity to go home. Inej Ghafa’s story starts like this, she becomes something that everyone else will say that she is not but that she knows she is. It starts with a girl who names her blades after her saints, who still prays to them, who wants to tear down the Menagerie piece by piece.

Inej Ghafa’s story starts like this, it starts with her.

3, can you see them there, by the side of the road

One month after their father dies Kaz and Jordie stand by the side of a dirt road. It is the only one that goes by what used to be the family farm. Years later Kaz will have stood by the side of hundreds of dirt roads just like this one. His hands will be covered in the same dirt that has turned the road beneath their feet to mud. They will call him dirty hands. 

Jordie promises him that they will not live in the boarding house forever. Jordie tells Kaz that one day they will live in one of the houses that line the squares, that they will eat candy and Kaz will go to school. Kaz is young, he doesn’t think much of Jordie’s promises, he is too young to know that Jordie is living on dreams. Years later Kaz will break into pretty houses that line squares, he will have sworn off the sweet things in life in exchange for the power that he has learned to wield. They will call him a genius, he has never gone to school.

Jordie dies in a plague and all of Kaz’s dreams die with him. There is no more talk of pretty houses and sweet things, there is no more talk of school. Kaz walks off of the barge full of the dead and walks into the Barrel. He is beaten and starved and hungry for revenge. Years later they will call him the Bastard of the Barrel. Years later people will say that he was born in the Barrel, that his hands are claws, that he has no mother.

Kaz learns Pekka Rollins name. He joins the Dregs. He gets a tattoo and replaces skinned knees for stab wounds. There are no grand dreams filled with hope, there is only the one goal, the one vengeful goal.

Kaz stands at the side of a dirt road next to a boy who will soon be a ghost. Years later he will have stood by hundreds of dirt roads. Years later his hands will be covered in dirt. Kaz’s hands are dirty, they will never be clean again.

4, i want to tell you this story without having to run out 

Matthias had sisters once. Sisters with the same blond hair and blue eyes as he did. Matthias has no sisters now.

He has only a single sister now. One who has earned his brotherhood in blood. 

Once Matthias had parents, they are but a distant echo now. He can only summon the barest glimpses of them. When Nina asks him about his family he tells her his parents were hard, but kind. This is true, to an extent, it is what all the other recruits said of their parents. If Matthias thinks back hard enough he can half remember being thrown out into the snow, the biting sting of a slap on his cheek.

He has no parents but none of them do. Even Wylan has only the shell of what used to be his mother. Theoretically, Inej has parents but they know only the daughter that was stolen from them, not the one that remains.

Matthias was angry once. A bone deep instinctual sort of hatred that had hooked its claws in his soul and refused to let go. Nina tells him it was a replacement for love. Mathias is unsure if he believes her because his hatred came from love. 

He is not so angry anymore that he knows nothing else. He thinks all of them have been angry like that. He thinks that all of them have hurt so much that they needed, wanted, begged for something to hate. Matthias thinks that he is the only one that was consumed by it.

Matthias had a family once. He had a home and parents and sisters. Then he had a family of soldiers who didn’t love him but cared for him all the same. Sometimes he wishes that he could remember his parents beyond the barest glimpses of an arm reaching out to grab him. Sometimes he wishes he could remember his sisters as something more than streaks of golden blonde hair. 

Matthias has a family now. It is something that he does not even have to think about. He knows that if he wants a fight he can pick one with Jesper and then eat dinner later. If he wants to talk about faith he goes to Inej with her calm reassurance and Suli sayings. Nina asks about his life before, she teases him, they spend time together and there is love. Kaz schemes, plots, and plans but deep down Matthias knows he has a heart, knows that he cares for each and every one of them in his own way. Wylan is the quiet center, the soft unassuming middle, he is sweetness and naïveté, but he is theirs.

Matthias had sisters once, he hunks that this is what could have been if they had lived.

5, his shoulder blots out the starts but the minutes don’t stop

Wylan remembers that once upon a time his father loved him. He knows this the way he knows which chemicals to use when the Dregs need something with a little bit of oomph. 

Once Wylan’s father loved his mother but Wylan thinks he might have ruined that somehow. He thinks that if he could only read, if he was less soft, then maybe his father wouldn’t have needed to send her away. Wouldn’t have told him that his mother is dead. Wylan thinks that if his mother had been able to have more children than his mother would still be living in the house where he grew up.

Wylan is nine when he realises that he is not normal. He is ten when he finds out where people like him go. Wylan is sixteen when he moves to the Barrel. He is sixteen and stupid and hoping that across a canal is far enough away that his father can’t get to him. Wylan is wrong. The letters come nearly every day, he never opens them, never bothers to look at what fresh insult his father has written. He hears through the grapevine that his father has remarried and he feels a pang, not for his old life, but for whatever child will be brought up that way.

Once, Wylan Van Eck mourned a mother. Once, he brought her home. Once there was a boy who could not read but knew things and built things and succeeded. Once Wylan Van Eck was scared of the big house where he grew up, now he owns it.

Wylan remembers that once upon a time his father pretended to love him and his mother. He knows this the way he knows the calluses on Jesper’s palms.

Once Wylan’s father loved him, but it wasn’t really love. 

6, without having to say that i ran out into the street to prove something (Jesper)

Jesper’s father sent him to university, Jesper ran into the streets of Ketterdam and stayed there. Sometimes Jesper feels badly for it, feels badly for disappointing his father, his mother. But Jesper ran to the streets to prove something and once he started, he didn’t know how to stop.

Once, before his mother died he heard his parents talking. He heard his mother tell his father that Ravka might come for them. His father told her that Ravka would never come to their remote little jurda farm. Jesper ran to the streets to prove something, and it worked.

The first time Jesper goes gambling he feels a spark where previously there had only been a yawning pit of emptiness. He hears the click of the wheel, the swish of cards and it is like a long lost lullaby. Jesper ran to the streets to prove something and this is not it.

When Kaz hires him, hires his hands and his brains and his eyes, Jesper has never wanted more than to go back to the wilderness from whence he came. It is the first time he has missed the farm, but it will not be the last. Jesper likes the steady weight of his pistols, the comforting way his rifle lays across his back. Jesper ran to the streets to prove something and maybe this is it.

Jesper ran to the streets to get away from the drudgery of studying, Then he ran to the streets to prove that there was nowhere Ravka could find him if he didn’t want them to. Jesper ran to the streets because he heard the sirens call of the wheel and the lullaby of the card tables, to prove that he could replace his need to use his power with something else. He ran to the streets to prove that he was the best at something and it was shooting.

Jesper ran into the streets to prove something and he did.


End file.
